Stone Cold Undercover Agent

by Nicole Helm

Though Jaime wanted nothing to do with this, he also jumped out of the car. He had to make sure The Stallion did nothing to Ranger Cooper or Gabby’s sister.

  Jaime grabbed a gun for each hand. It was easy to catch up with The Stallion given Jaime’s legs were longer. Since The Stallion had his gun raised to his shoulder, Jaime pretended to accidentally skid into him as he fired his weapon.

  “Damn it, Rodriguez. I had a shot!” The Stallion bellowed.

  Jaime surveyed the ground below. He could see two figures standing like sitting ducks in the middle of the desert. They were too far away to make a shot a sure thing, but why weren’t they moving after that first shot?

  Jaime raised his gun. “Allow me, senor.”

  Jaime was surprised that his arm very nearly shook as he took aim. He’d used his guns plenty in the past two years, though usually to disarm someone or to scare them, not to kill them.

  This was no different. He aimed as close as he could without risking any harm and fired.

  “You idiot!”

  “They are too far away. We have to be closer.”

  “Like hell.” The Stallion raised his gun again and since Jaime couldn’t run into him again, he did the only other thing he could think of. He sneezed, loudly.

  Again, The Stallion’s shot went wide. He snapped his furious gaze on Jaime, and as his head and body turned toward him, so did the gun.

  Jaime held himself unnaturally still, doing everything he could to show no fear or reaction to that gun pointed in his direction. He couldn’t clear his throat to speak, and he could barely hear his own thoughts over the beating of his heart.

  “Perdón, senor, but we need to be closer,” Jaime said as if a gun that could blow him to pieces wasn’t very nearly trained on him at close range. “If you want to ensure the Ranger is dead and the girl is yours, we need to be closer.” Jaime pointed out over the desert below, where the couple was now running.

  With no warning, The Stallion jerked the gun their way and shot. The woman scrambled behind the outcropping, but Jaime watched as Ranger Cooper jerked. Jaime winced, but Cooper didn’t fall. He kept running. Until he was behind the rock outcropping with Gabby’s sister.

  “Get in the Jeep,” The Stallion ordered with calm and ruthless efficiency, making Jaime wonder if he was really crazy at all.

  Jaime nodded, knowing he was on incredibly thin ice. The Stallion could shoot him at any time.

  You could shoot him first.

  He could. God, he could all but feel himself doing it, but Gabby was back in that compound, defenseless. And if the message hadn’t gotten through to his superiors... Even if he shot The Stallion his cover would be blown. He’d have to take Ranger Cooper back, and the FBI would intercept all that. Then they’d make him follow their rules and regulations to get Gabby out.

  As long as he remained Rodriguez, there was a chance to get Gabby, and the rest of the girls, out by any means necessary.

  So he drove the Jeep like a madman down to where the couple had been hiding.

  “They are gone by now,” Jaime said, perhaps a little too hopefully.

  “Keep driving. Find them.” The Stallion clenched and unclenched his hand on the rifle.

  Jaime did as he was told, driving around mountains until The Stallion told him to stop.

  “Stay in the Jeep,” The Stallion ordered. “Turn off the ignition. When I call for you, you run. Do you comprende?”

  Jaime nodded and The Stallion got out of the Jeep, striding away. Jaime thought about staying put for all of five seconds and then he set out to follow his enemy.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Gabby sat in the common room with Jasmine, Tabitha and Alyssa. They were huddled on the couch, pretending to work on a project The Stallion had given them a few days ago. Layne and Wallace were groaning and limping around the house. Both clearly very injured and yet not seeking any medical attention.

  “They’re vulnerable. We have to press our advantage now. We have to hit them where it hurts,” Alyssa whispered fiercely, staring daggers at the men who were currently groaning about in the kitchen.

  Jasmine looked down at her lap, pale and clearly not wanting any part of this powwow, but...

  “Unfortunately she’s right,” Gabby said. “It’s our only chance. They’ve had time to call for backup. The longer we wait...the more chance someone else comes.”

  She felt guilty for not telling them about the possibility of an FBI raid. They deserved to know the full truth, and they deserved to know what possibilities lay ahead, but Gabby knew they had to get Alyssa out of there before she got killed or got them all killed. They couldn’t wait for the FBI to come. They couldn’t wait for Jaime to magically fix everything.

  No, they had to act.

  “We have to time it exactly and precisely. Two of us against one, the other two against the other. Same time. Same attack. Same plan.”

  Gabby took stock of the two men grousing in the kitchen then of the three women huddled around her. Alyssa practically jumped out of her seat, completely ready to go, Tabitha looked grim and certain, but Jasmine looked pale and scared.

  Gabby didn’t want to draw attention to that. Not with Alyssa as...well, whatever Alyssa was. Without looking at her, Gabby reached over and gave Jasmine’s hand a squeeze.

  “I’m just not strong like you, Gabby,” she whispered. “What if I mess up?”

  Alyssa started to say something harsh but Gabby stopped her with a look. “That’s why we’re doing it in pairs. We’re a team. Me and Jasmine. Alyssa and Tabitha. Right?”

  Alyssa mostly just swore and Gabby watched her carefully. Jaime’s words about trusting her rang through her head. Because how could she trust a woman who’d clearly lost her mind? Who’d just as soon kill them all as anything else?

  But Jaime had been too cautious. Too afraid for her safety. Gabby didn’t have anyone’s safety to be afraid for right now. She and the girls were getting to the now-or-never point. Alyssa was already there, and though Tabitha and Jasmine had been somewhat more resilient, they had to feel as she did. They had to be losing that perilous grip on who they were.

  Jaime had given herself back to her. Hope, a possible future, but those women hadn’t had that. So she had to get them free.

  “We’ll take Layne,” Gabby said, nudging Jasmine with her shoulder. “You two will have Wallace.”

  “But he’s the bigger one,” Jasmine whispered.

  “It’ll be fine. He has a gunshot wound to the shoulder. Wallace has one to the leg. We’re four healthy, capable women.”

  “B-but what do we do, exactly? After we attack them, what do we do? Run?” Tabitha asked, clearly forcing herself to be strong.

  “Kill them. We want to kill them. They did this to us. They deserve to die,” Alyssa all but chanted, a wild gleam to her eyes.

  Gabby wasn’t sure why she hesitated at that. She had indeed been stripped from her life by men like these two, and they surely deserved death. But she found she didn’t want to be the one to give it to them.

  “We’re going to use their injuries to our advantage, hurt them, and then tie them up so we can get away without fear of being followed.”

  Alyssa scoffed. “I’m going to kill him.”

  Gabby reached over and grabbed Alyssa’s hands, trying to catch her frenzied gaze. “Please. Understand. I don’t want to be haunted by this for the rest of my life. I want to leave here and leave it behind. No killing unless we absolutely have to. If we have a hope of getting out of here as unharmed as we are in this moment, we don’t kill them. We incapacitate them.”

  “And then what? We’re just going to run? Run where?”

  “I have a vague notion of where we are, and that will help get us out. We’ve survived this, we can survive walking until we find a town.”

 
Alyssa shook her head in disgust, but Gabby squeezed her hands tighter.

  “I need you with me on this. We need to all be together and on the same page. Don’t you want to be able to go home and go back to your old life and not have that on your conscience?”

  “Who said I have a conscience?” Alyssa retorted, and for a very quick second Gabby believed her, believed that coldness. She’d seen nothing but cold for eight years.

  Until Jaime.

  That made Gabby fight so much harder. “The four of us are in this together. The four of us. They can’t take that away from us. We have survived together, and when we get out, we will still be indelibly linked by that. We’re like sisters. They can’t make us turn on each other. You can’t let them. As long as we work together, as long as we’re linked, they can’t hurt us.”

  Gabby wasn’t certain that was true. They had guns and weapons, after all. But they were hurt. She had to believe it gave her and the girls an advantage.

  Alyssa was looking at her strangely. “Sisters,” she whispered. “I don’t... No one’s ever fought with me before.”

  “We will,” Tabitha said, adding her hand to Gabby’s on top of Alyssa’s. Then Jasmine added her hand.

  “We don’t get out of this without each other,” Gabby said, glancing back at Wallace and Layne. Wallace was still moaning, but Layne was glancing their way.

  “We’ll slowly make excuses to go to our rooms, but you’ll all come to mine,” she whispered as she pulled her hand from the girls.

  Jasmine brought her sewing back to her lap and Tabitha pretended to examine the next package they were supposed to hide in the stuffing of a toy dog.

  Gabby got to her feet, but Layne was there and, with his good arm, he shoved her back down.

  Well, crap. This wasn’t going to go well.

  “Problem?” she asked sweetly, looking up at his suspicious gaze. She probably should avert her gaze and show some sort of deference to the man with a gun in his waistband and a nasty expression on his face.

  “Aren’t you supposed to be locked up?”

  “I was just going back to my room when you shoved me back to the couch so rudely.”

  “I’d watch how you talk to me, little girl,” Layne seethed, getting his face into hers.

  Gabby bit her tongue because what she really wanted to do was tell him to be careful how he talked to her, and then punch him in his bloody bandage as hard and painfully as she could.

  Instead she slowly got to her feet, unfolding to her full height. Though he was still much taller than she was, she affected her most condescending stare, never breaking eye contact with him as she stood there, shoulders back.

  She was more than a little gratified by the way he seemed to wilt just a teeny tiny bit. As if he knew he couldn’t break her.

  “I’ll just be going to my room now. Feel free to lock my door behind me.”

  “You little—” He lifted his meaty hand, she supposed to backhand her, and she probably should have let him hit her. She probably should let this all go, but whatever instincts to defend herself she’d tried to eradicate surged to life. She grabbed his hand before it could land across her face, and then put all her force behind shoving him, trying to make contact with his injury.

  He stumbled back, though he didn’t fall. He let out a hideous moan as, with his bad arm, he pulled the gun from his waistband and trained it on Gabby.

  She was certain she was dead. She stood there, waiting for the firearm to go off. Waiting for the piercing pain of a bullet. Or maybe she wouldn’t feel it at all. Maybe she would simply die.

  But before another breath could be taken, Alyssa was in front of her, and then Tabitha and Jasmine at her sides.

  “You’ll have to get through us to shoot her, and if you shoot all of us?” Alyssa pretended to ponder that. “I doubt The Stallion would be too pleased with you.”

  “I’ll kill all of you without breaking a sweat, you miserable—”

  “Isn’t it cute?” Alyssa said, looking back at Gabby. “He thinks he’s in charge, not his exacting, demanding boss. Well, I guess it takes some balls to be that stupid.”

  Gabby closed her eyes, she didn’t think goading him was really the road to take here, but he hadn’t fired.

  Yet.

  There was a quiet standoff and Gabby tried to rein in the heavy overbeating of her heart. Jasmine’s hand slid into hers and Tabitha’s arm wound around her shoulders. Alyssa faced off with Layne as if she had no fear whatsoever.

  Together, they couldn’t be hurt. God, she very nearly believed it.

  “If you aren’t in your rooms in five seconds, I will shoot all of you,” Layne said menacingly.

  Gabby didn’t believe him, but she didn’t want to risk it, either. The girls in front of her hurried down the hall first, and Gabby tried to follow, but Layne grabbed her arm as she passed, digging his heavy fingers into her skin hard enough to leave bruises.

  “Tonight you’ll be screaming my name,” he hissed.

  Gabby smiled. It was either that or throw up. “Maybe you’ll be screaming mine.” She yanked her arm out of his grasp.

  She was pretty sure the only thing that kept Layne from shooting her at this point was Wallace’s sharp stand-down order.

  When Gabby got to her room, she locked the door behind her. It wouldn’t keep her safe from Layne since he undoubtedly had a key, but it at least gave her the illusion of safety.

  When she turned back to face her room, the girls were all there, Tabitha and Jasmine on her bed, Alyssa pacing the room.

  “And now we plan,” Alyssa said, that dark glint in her eyes comforting for the first time.

  * * *

  JAIME STALKED THE STALLION. It wasn’t easy to carefully follow a man who was carefully following another man, especially through a weirdly arid desert landscape dotted by mountains and rock outcroppings. But then, when had any of this been easy?

  The Stallion stopped as though he’d seen something, and Jaime waited a beat. He realized The Stallion was peering around a swell of earth, and when The Stallion didn’t move forward in the swiftly calculating pace he’d been employing, Jaime sucked in a breath.

  On a hunch and a prayer, Jaime snuck around the other side of it. He kept his footsteps slow and quiet.

  And then a shot rang out.

  Jaime took off in a run, skidding to a halt when he saw The Stallion and Ranger Cooper standing off.

  Jaime couldn’t hear their conversation, but both men were unharmed and The Stallion didn’t fire. Jaime dropped the small handguns he’d been carrying for ease of movement and unholstered his largest and most accurate weapon.

  He trained it on The Stallion, only occasionally letting his gaze dart around to try to catch sight of the woman who remained hidden somewhere. The Stallion and Ranger Cooper spoke, back and forth, guns pointed at each other, lawman and madman in the strangest showdown Jaime had ever witnessed.

  That gave Jaime the presence of mind to breathe. To watch and bide his time. Without knowing where Natalie Torres was, he couldn’t act rashly. He—

  Something in The Stallion’s posture changed and Jaime sighted his gun, ready to shoot, ready to stop The Stallion before anything happened to Ranger Cooper. But before he could line up his shot and pull the trigger without accidentally hitting Cooper, Cooper fired.

  The gun flew from The Stallion’s hand and he howled with rage. Why the hell hadn’t Cooper shot the bastard in the heart? Jaime was about to do just that, but the woman appeared from a crevice in one of the rocks, holding her own weapon up and trained on The Stallion.

  She reminded him so much of Gabby it physically hurt. There wasn’t an identical resemblance, but it was that determined glint in Natalie’s dark eyes that had him thinking about Gabby. If she was safe. If any of them would make it through
this in one piece.

  He shook that thought away. They would. They all damn well would.

  And then Natalie pulled the trigger. She missed, but before Jaime could step out from the outcropping, she’d fired again. Even from Jaime’s distance he could see the red bloom on The Stallion’s stomach.

  “Rodriguez!” he screamed, followed by The Stallion’s sad attempt at Spanish. Jaime sighed. He could only hope Cooper recognized him, or that they wouldn’t shoot on sight. He could stay there, of course, but it would be worse if he waited for Ranger Cooper to find him.

  He stepped out from behind the land swell and walked slowly and calmly toward his writhing fake boss.

  Ranger Cooper watched him with the dawning realization of recognition, but Natalie clearly didn’t have a clue as she kept her gun trained on him.

  Jaime thought maybe, maybe, there was a chance he could maintain his identity and get back to Gabby, so he nodded to Cooper. “Tell your woman to put down the gun,” he said in Spanish.

  Cooper looked over at the woman. “Put it down, Nat,” he murmured, an interesting softness in the command. One Jaime thought he recognized.

  Wasn’t that odd?

  “I won’t let anyone kill us. Not now. Not when that man has my sister,” Natalie said, her hands shaking, her dark eyes shiny with tears. The Torres women were truly a marvel.

  The Stallion made a grab for Jaime’s leg piece, but Jaime easily kicked him away. No, he wasn’t Rodriguez anymore. He had to be the man he’d always been, and he had to do his duty.

  He wasn’t Rodriguez, a monster with a shady past. He was Jaime Alessandro, FBI agent, and regardless of who he was, he’d find a way to get Gabby to safety as soon as he got out of there.

  “Ma’am, I need you to put your weapon down,” Jaime said, steady and sure, making eye contact with Natalie. “I’m with the FBI. I’ve been working undercover for Callihan.” Jaime ignored The Stallion’s outraged cry, because he saw the way the information tumbled together in Natalie’s head.

  She didn’t even have to ask about Gabby for him to know that’s what she needed to hear. “I know where your sister is. She’s...safe.”